


Carrion

by suffaru41



Category: Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活 | Re:Zero Starting Life in Another World (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Hurt No Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Murder, Other, Paranoia, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicide, Torture, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Wrath/Oboreru If, wrath if spoilers only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:35:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29523729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suffaru41/pseuds/suffaru41
Summary: In which Natsuki Subaru, after his successful attack on the mansion, stumbles through a series of his own monochromatic memories — because no matter how many times he dies and causes others to die, he will only continue to be haunted.(Second place winner for the Unthinkable Presents contest.)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	Carrion

**Author's Note:**

> further TW at the bottom author notes, given two of the warnings are about specific spoilers for the fic. regarding main story spoilers: like in the wrath if, there are two characters mentioned in this fic that are said to appear in a later arc of the main story, but haven't yet. which technically isn't a spoiler, but i figured it was worth mentioning. otherwise, this fic is anime only safe as long as you know how the wrath if goes.
> 
> fun fact: "wrathbaru i am begging you to let me write or i will coin flipy flip myself" was what my Discord status was during the last day to finish my contest entry o o p. And then I proceeded to finish the fic at 5 am after getting two weeks of no sleep and already having fatigue issues. :D (Yes I'm fine lol) And uh, without further ado, hope you enjoy reading! The theme of this contest was suffering, but imma be honest, I feel like the real suffering was me during the two weeks I wrote this, hah. Though I did finally figure out how to solve the awkward spacing around italics and punctuation issue that happened in my other fics, and that makes me happy. :D
> 
> And finally, a big thank you to Arouctine for beta reading this fic!

If Subaru could even sleep, he thinks that he would dream of the dead.

And he is so, so exhausted.

A metallic taste invades his tongue, weaves in and out of his teeth like liquid, like blood and bile, always accompanied by the smell of decay — of burnt flesh, charred as if it were cooked meat. Of rawness, like an animal waiting to be slaughtered, waiting to be burnt and prepared on a silver platter, scrambling to survive even with certain death.

Because death can be a rather indulgent thing.

It comes easy when your body is as disgustingly fragile, and it becomes indulgent when —

The claws reach over his head, loom over his too-thin body, and slam into the sides of his skull. Vision wavering and gray, steps stumbling, his fingers trembling and curling into fists in a futile attempt to hide it — god, he’s a mess, and that fucking gnawing feeling in his guts spills into that itch to just — just reach out with his own claws and devour, instead of being devoured himself. 

Even if he is doomed, even if every step he takes is like fighting through water clogging up his lungs, as a morning star descends upon his torn apart limbs, as hands tighten around his throat, _it hurts it hurts, stop hurting me, stop hurting, why won’t you just kill me, why—_

_Why… do I want to hurt you so bad?_

A shaking hand reaches up to grasp at his scarf, the gray of his skin turning a lighter shade with his death grip. Through clenched teeth, he rasps, “Open the door, Puck.”

Subaru resists the urge to flinch once Puck, in a flash of light, lands on his shoulder. 

Puck only gives his usual disarming, goofy smile, with the casual shrug of his shoulders, and says, “Didn’t think you were gonna visit Lia so soon after —“

Stiffening, a semblance of feeling washes over Subaru — he remembers his cruel mercy of _I am that person,_ his sword plunging through her chest, and then her falling on him with a relieved smile. Her guts spilling through his fingers in the form of light, his arms half-holding her in some pathetic mimicry of a hug, her final sigh breathed out against his own fluttering heart.

It was colorful, in the same way that pink hair and a furious, murderous gaze was, in the same way that a lonely half-elf girl in the middle of a collapsing mansion was.

“The door,” Subaru grits out. “Open. The door.”

Puck eyes him with a chuckle. “Alright, alright, but you shouldn’t rush a father like myself, you know? If you come to visit again, I might not let you in to see my daughter a second time.” Then he pauses, tilting his head. “Right now, Lia isn’t understanding that I know what’s best for her, and that you simply agreed with me. She’s being overly emotional at the moment, really.”

Subaru snarls, “ _Puck.”_

With a sigh, Puck summons multiple key-shaped ice to fit into the intertwined locks and keyholes obsessively covering the door — which clicks open as Puck himself disappears in a small burst of light.

In the silence, a rasping breath leaves Subaru’s cracked lips, his trembling fingers curling against the doorknob. The shadows around him draw tighter and tighter and — 

He’s fucking hesitating, isn’t he. He’s fucking hesitating because the last time he saw her, it was in that godforsaken mansion where he had succumbed to his own misery. 

He’d fallen to his knees, he’d broken down crying and begging for her to come with him, fully knowing he was just dooming her like he’s doomed himself, fully knowing he’s just stealing her away to use and shatter — because everyone and everything turns on him in the end, everyone and everything _hurts,_ so he’ll beat her to it, he’ll rip away that knife from behind her back and plunge it through her chest and then his own himself, isn’t that — 

Subaru shoves open the door. 

His feet trip on each other, his legs shaky and spindly like a newborn fawn, like _prey,_ and he’s sick, he’s so sick and tired and —

“ _No,”_ drags out from his clenched teeth, from his quivering lips, into a half-sob, a half-scream, “No. No, no, _no.”_

Slumped over like a ragdoll, like a puppet with its strings cut, is a girl with a matted curtain of pink hair framed around a deathly pale, gaunt face. Held by her thin wrists, the sound of chains echo and rattle as she strains her neck to gaze up at him with a familiar anger. 

One that hollows you all the way through, devouring until nothing is left but that awful, awful feeling, and it’s all you know — it’s all you care to know, because it’s comforting in the most visceral way possible. 

And you know that there isn’t anything else you deserve more than destruction itself.

“Does it make you feel a sense of accomplishment, Barusu,” she hisses, her head lolling forward as her cruel eyes flickered to him, “to keep me all to yourself like this until you die at my hands?”

Red, blood red, stains his blurred, gray vision as he bites back a shriek. 

That coin sits in his pocket — no. _No,_ he can’t, even if that irritation flaring up in him reaches for it. It’s better to continue this further, until he —

 _Emilia,_ where is she, how _dare you interrupt,_ _how dare you do this to me —_

One step. Just one step after another, though with his stumbling, he appears as much of a broken puppet as her — and he hates it, he hates it _so much,_ but he still manages to make his way to her even with his pounding head and too-tight skin and that sense of _wrongness._

And then, _and then —_

Subaru yanks her hair back with a tight fist, hard enough to pull strands out of her scalp, that goddamn itch in him to just completely and utterly _decimate_ dying down slightly with her gasping breaths, with the sharp angles of her throat exposed to him.

They’ve done this song and dance a thousand times. He’s left her to starve just as he’s been for these last two years, only feeding scraps to her as if she were a stray dog. He’s screamed and sobbed at her as she smothered him as much as the witch’s scent does. He’s dug his nails into her like claws and she’s beat him into a shuddering, bloody mass curled up into a ball. 

And on the worst days, she’s inconsolable as her hands squeeze around the scars marking his throat. 

Scars, of course, that are built up from two years of these little conversations of theirs.

He thinks that he lets her do this, he thinks that she’s done this to him all the same — but really, at the end of the day, they’re both unlovable monsters dragging each other into the depths. 

No matter how indulgent it is.

“You’re not allowed to leave me.” Subaru’s voice goes hoarse as she bares her teeth at him, her narrowed eyes bright with tears. So with his head spinning, he leans forward to growl, “You don’t get to choose, Ram.”

His other hand grips her windpipe, enough for it to serve as a warning and a lifeline at the same time. 

Her breath only stutters. She’s used to this. She knows how this whole relationship of theirs works. 

And yet, it’s funny. It’s funny how he’s always going around in circles with her and fate. It’s funny how he’s melting memories and colors together and calling it truth.

But the truth of the matter is this: he didn’t start from zero when he stepped out of the convenience store, and into a new world that hated and hates him so. He may have died for the first time in that loothouse, with spilled guts and a girl who absolutely shouldn’t ( _can’t_ ) love him anymore, but he truly died at that cliffside. 

He died in all the ways that don’t matter. 

The kind of death that really matters — blissful nothing, or perhaps even another hell that he absolutely deserves — was robbed from him.

Those hands around his throat, the blood and bile spilling from his lips, the indulgence of death — none of it ever left. 

“Weak… and pathetic Barusu,” Ram sneers, “depending on me for his sadistic and masochistic desires. You... always were the perverse, obsessive type.”

Subaru does not flinch as her hands lunge for his throat. In fact, he lets his own hands go limp at his sides.

Only for a sobbing, wheezing laugh to tear away from him. 

_Not again, not again, not again, not again, not again, not again —_ his chest heaves in a panicked rhythm, his mouth wide open and foaming at the corners, his eyes blown and bulging to stare up at the vivid sunset and the falling snow.

_Why, why, again — I can’t — I, I — again, and again, and again — I don’t want to be in this memory, why am I — I don’t — I deserve it, I —_

Knees jabbing into his shoulders, blood trickling down a pale arm, and an endless, bottomless kind of despair contorted on her face. 

Underneath her, Subaru could only struggle — convulsing. Thrashing, and writhing about in desperation, a gurgled giggle cutting through the sound of gasping. 

_Let go, let go of me, let go, let go, go_ away —

“What’s so funny,” Ram snaps, and it’s breathtaking. The sight of her, over him, enraged and saddened to the point of being hollowed out by it, to the point of hurting him again. 

It’s so funny, how he’d thought that they all would give a damn. That if he just earned their trust, their companionship, their love, by scrambling anxiously to win their approval — he’d win all the things that he was so entitled to, but knew he never deserved. 

And because he’s an idiot, he got so attached anyway. 

It’s weak. It’s weak to become clingy with those who have only led him to hurt. It’s weak, to try and save those who’ve hurt him so badly. It’s weak, when he can die so easily, over and over and over, and none of them would ever have to try all that hard to destroy him.

Why — _why —_

His lips curve into a mimicry of a smile, he realizes. Lost — he’s absolutely lost it, and he thinks that he’ll lose himself in the fingers wringing his neck and her hollowed out, tear-filled gaze. He’ll drown in it, as his mind can only beg for peace, for quiet, as he lacks even the ability to scream.

— why the hell did he even bother?

His cheeks are wet with tears, he realizes, as those fingers loosen, loosen, until she collapses beside him. 

But around his heart, he still feels the ghost pain of a cold touch, squeezing and caressing and whispering its supposed love. 

_That isn’t what happened, no one else was here when I, why is_ she —

Subaru rolls over on his side, half-curling into a twitching ball as he takes too-fast breaths. Hacking, wheezing, he spits up blood and a barely suppressed whine through the sharp, jagged agony in his throat.

The red is so stark against the white, white snow. It’s all he can see, all he can register — the bitter cold is harsh enough to almost burn, his ears ringing and his vision swimming with those spilling tears. And as he struggles down a gulp of air, his fingertips hover at his neck, as if to reassure himself that it was over, that he survived, and that —

_Do it._

_You should’ve done this sooner, should’ve done it before they ever touched you._

Slowly, he pushes himself up to turn towards Ram. Desire seizes control of him in its own chokehold, squeezing his frail heart enough to contort his unheard cries into a harsher kind of determination, a more frantic kind of _hurt._

If he could even speak, he tells himself that maybe, if he had done so sooner, no one would’ve died. _He_ wouldn’t have died. And he could’ve just had fun with them all and pretended that their smiles weren’t hiding their simmering hatred, that their plots to torture him as soon as his back was turned were nonexistent.

But really, Subaru didn’t have the strength or virtue to save them either.

And, and — the decay. It all smells like decay. 

His empty gaze travels over to the mabeast carcasses littered around the two of them. 

Subaru doesn’t think he can ever comprehend the difference between those disgusting corpses and Ram and him anymore. 

Only that the red all over Ram, from the many cuts across her skin, from her messy hair and fierce eyes, is so much more… appealing. Soothing. It calms down an ache that’s been planted in him ever since he stepped out of the convenience store, ever since she and her sister took that seed and twisted it into vile branches. 

It soothes him in that her hatred is an open book compared to two worlds that have abandoned him at every turn.

Raw — this cold is raw, his eyesight flickers black and white and gray and a raw red, and he can’t feel his hands. His hands, scraped raw and trembling, holding a — 

Ram’s head is smashed into the soft snow below her. 

He can’t tell if he’s laughing or not.

“I… will absolutely kill you,” she promises, faintly, weakly, in a trembling whisper.

The rock in his hands is brought down again. 

And again. 

And again. 

And again. 

Subaru struggles back another sob as blood splatters across his face and runs down his chin. 

With an awful relief washing over him, the stone drops to the ground. 

He follows soon after.

She’s staring at him. She’s staring with wide eyes and red dyeing the pupils, red streaming through the black and white and gray. Her face is caving in, the blood mingling with her tears, and her face bores into him and asks, _Why couldn’t you just die here?_

_Why didn’t you jump off that cliff?_

_Why did you insist on hurting so many people instead?_

Bursts of light flowing from Beatrice’s impaled chest, Rem’s slack face and eerily still body, Ram’s screams, the sound of chains, the witch closing in on him with her scent and obsessive embrace, the flip of a coin, Emilia, _Emilia —_

No… _no,_ that’s — that’s wrong, that didn’t happen here, not yet, this is the moment where everything, _everything_ went horribly wrong from here, but you didn’t, didn’t…

Subaru staggers to his feet and towards the edge of the cliff. 

If he could speak, he’d shriek, _Leave me be, I’m not weak anymore, I’m not_ guilty, _this isn’t going to_ work, _this was my only way out._

A pounding headache, as if it were claws drumming against the sides of his head, makes him stumble and reel. 

He wants to jump. He wanted to, he should’ve, he _needed_ to. His life isn’t worth anything. He’d save them if he just cared about himself even less. 

And back then, he considered it. He thought about it over and over again and he was one goddamn step away from the edge, but he couldn’t.

He can’t. 

He can’t get hurt again. Not like this — this uncontrollable and rabid thing.

So Subaru falls to his knees once more, instead of falling off to fucking die.

And then — the jagged rocks shift into the carpet of the mansion, the gray sky melting into one frozen hallway after another, the descending snow worsening into a raging blizzard —

_Stop. This is wrong, this is wrong, make it stop._

_Stop it._

_Why, why, why am I back here, why am I —_

As the mansion crashes down around them, he’s on his knees before Emilia. 

With tears spilling down her cheeks, and her hand covering her mouth in horror, she can only cry, “S-Subaru… how could you and — and Puck… why? Why would you…”

Her voice dies. Fury and despair alike flash across her face, and — ah. 

It’s a familiar, comforting sight.

His arms — thinner and far more skeletal than how his body felt at the cliffside — are wrapped around his churning stomach, as his own whimpering and wailing fills the silence.

 _I hate you,_ he can’t help but think, viciously and deliriously, _I hate all of you._

Beatrice is dead at his hands. Roswaal is dead as well, killed by the loss of his dear maids and finished off by Cecilius. Fredrica has been ushered away by Puck, who proved himself useful in helping Subaru here. 

Ram is locked up deep within Pandemonium, chained to the wall and half a corpse herself. 

And Emilia… Emilia is…

In color, too. 

Because she saved him in this world, once. She’s the only thing that ever stayed constant, then. Even if his blood boils sometimes, when he thinks about her failure to do so afterwards, or when that monstrous impulse in him roars until he’s deafened to anything else. 

Because she’s so _good_ that he’ll use her to soothe his own hurt, anchoring himself like all those horribly cathartic moments with Ram. He never deserved her, especially not after this, but that’s fine. 

She’ll hate him. She’ll never, ever love him. That’s how everything is supposed to be. She may be in color because of her kind heart, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t be staring her down as her hands tighten around his throat. 

“Emilia… _Emilia.”_ Subaru’s frail body lists to the side as he struggles to keep himself upright. He confesses, even though it makes his stomach lurch with more nausea, “Pl-please, _please..._ I was so alone for those two years, I...” 

His head remains bowed, as if in reverence, but his wild and obsessive gaze stays fixated on her. 

Emilia, who’s stricken expression only scrunches up further in her turmoil.

And the hands around his heart won’t stop regardless, _stop it — stop, stop, you’re not supposed to be here,_ and he loathes it. He loathes how he’s out of control and giving it up at the same time. 

He loathes how he really does dream of the —

“When… when I ran away and —“As his raspy voice rises in pitch with his hysteria, his arms tighten around his torso as if to break his own rib cage, and his teeth clench hard enough to make his jaw ache. “I was so afraid, I was so scared and I — I didn’t… I just wanted everything to be okay again, but it isn’t. It isn’t, it hurts, _it hurts so much.”_

Hesitantly, Emilia reaches out to him. And yet, even as she wavers, her face hardens. Somehow, she’s been different — more hollow — compared to the Emilia he knew two years ago. “This… this doesn’t excuse what you’ve done here. I — if… if we had reunited under different circumstances, I — I would’ve been happy — I really would’ve, Subaru! But I…” She swallows, taking a deep breath. Then, she says, as cold as the ice surrounding them, “I _cannot_ accept the actions that you and Puck have taken.”

Subaru lets out a harsh breath. “ _Please,”_ he spits out, his chest rising and falling in a panicked rush. Irritation stabs at him, and the added frustration makes his eyes sting. “You — you have to come with me. You can’t — you can’t leave me again. Please don’t leave me again.”

He stumbles to his feet, pushing himself to grab at her hands like a lifeline. His touch is too tight, too harsh, and Emilia recoils before settling at the sensation of his tears falling onto her skin. 

Subaru wants to scream. But he can’t, because he can’t breathe, because he needs to finish this and he needs _her,_ and to do that, he needs to be softer and hideously vulnerable and — and he tells himself that this is just an act. A lie to tug at her heartstrings. 

All he’s doing is betraying her before she gets the honor of doing so.

A palm caresses his cheek, and whispers, _It’s not all a lie, my beloved._

That’s not part of the memory. That’s not — that’s wrong, this is all _wrong,_ he wants to — 

_“Don’t leave,”_ Subaru chokes out. “I need your help, I need _you._ I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Emilia.”

He’s not — he’s not sorry, he’s not. There isn’t a single thing he regrets, there isn’t a single thing he cares about, because caring means more pain, and he doesn’t want it, he doesn’t, but he does. Everything he’s ever done is justified, everything had a reason, _everything —_

It’s all been meaningless. 

He’s shuddering, shaking all over with violent energy, and Emilia only stares at him. She’s staring and frozen in time, like a corpse, or at least half of one, and if he blinks, there’s red dyeing her pupils and purple irises and painting streaks down her silver hair. 

Her lips were forming around the words, _Subaru… I-I don’t have a choice, do I? But if... if you do need me… I’ll —_

Subaru rips his hands away from her, his fingers already burrowing into his cold palms. The blood that drips, drips from his nails is a sickening gray, and it taunts him by flickering red once, twice. He wants to tear into the flesh, he wants to destroy all this monochrome, and yet —

He killed Beatrice. 

She was in color. She was so, so colorful, and he killed her. He couldn’t understand why she spared him that day at the mansion, at the cliffside. He couldn’t understand, so he killed her. Out of pity, out of sympathy, but because it’s easier to deal with corpses rather than living, breathing people.

The thousands he’s left in his wake can attest to that. And even then, all the people he’s allowed himself to hold near are all one coin flip away from death. 

The only exceptions are two girls he uses for comfort, both of them dependent on his visits to live. One holds him while he sleeps, her despair fading into a far more quiet misery, and the other remains eerily similar to him — a broken shell who only has revenge left. 

They’re both _his._ But everything, in the end, is a balancing act along that cliffside edge.

Now, yanking at his hair, he screeches with tears still marking his hollow cheeks— “Do you hear me? I — I don’t need _anyone._ Now just _let me go.”_

That whisper, that _disgusting scent,_ shrouds him in an embrace once more. 

_I’m sorry, love._

The world spins. 

Spiraling and burning white-hot, he’s tripping — he’s _falling,_ and he reaches for the coin in his pocket, only to grasp at air instead, his vision turning watery like the wet gags he’s choking on, and then —

And then —

A morning star smashes his ribcage.

The ragged scream that leaves him is just an echo, a remnant of this very moment. It’s just a memory, a memory, it doesn’t hurt anymore because he doesn’t _care._

Every wrong thing he did, every person he hurt and every corpse he stepped over to create his empty throne — they brought it on themselves, they were going to do exactly the same as him, and all he did was return the favor.

But his arms are still wrapped around his spasming stomach. 

Blue hair stands out against a red sky, against red blood staining green grass. A yellow stripe peeks up at him, the limb chopped off at the knee, as he sobs out jumbled gibberish into the blood-soaked soil. 

None of that, of course, are the answers that Rem is looking for.

Warmth, warmth from her healing magic fills him with a temporary relief. If only for a split second — just to be cruelly ripped away as his bone _snaps._

The sound of his voice giving out, the sound of her voice shrieking about how much she’s hated him, all along, echoes throughout the forest on repeat. Chains and ripping and tearing flesh fill his ears, and he’d split apart his nerves from his body if he could, he’d destroy his sense of sound and sight and taste and _feeling_ so that this would all. 

Just. 

Go. Away.

So, this thought materializes, like a key: _I hate you. I hate all of you. I hate you all so much that I want you to —_

He and Rem might’ve been friends once, Subaru remembers. 

Back then, he squirmed under her attentive gaze, and he became embarrassed at her shutting down almost every one of his attempts to befriend her. He made all sorts of excuses about how his pride was being damaged in response, but really, all he wanted then was to make her laugh. 

He tried, and he even managed to get that feeling out of his head - the feeling of being surrounded by his severed body parts and vomit and pools of blood, and so he managed, and finally —

She smiled at him. 

She killed him, and he was surrounded by severed body parts and vomit and blood again.

She’s torturing him now _(stop it, stop, this is a memory, this isn’t happening anymore),_ and the pieces finally click together as he curls inward and wails until his voice dies.

So many times before, she had looked at him in a manner far too piercing and harsh. Her smile was always tightly strained at the edges, like all she wanted to do was rip out his throat with her teeth.

An act. It was all an act. Of course it was.

Subaru reaches out with his twitching fingers, dragging himself through the bloodied grass in a desperate attempt to crawl away. Weeping, he gurgles, “Y-you… lied… all of you always lie...”

When he was dying to the curse, she struck him with her morning star with the excuse of a mercy kill. She wanted him gone after seeing him try to grow closer with her, after seeing him come too close to her sister. She smiled at him then, knowing that once she had the opportunity, she’d torture him to death while everyone else in the mansion sat back and _let it happen._

They laughed at him. Their fingers were crossed behind their backs, and it must’ve been so fucking funny to see him try so hard to please them, when this was the fate they planned for him all along — his dead, decomposing body on a silver platter, after scrambling to survive and waiting to be slaughtered as they watched in amusement.

They even had the audacity to forget every single time he tried _so hard_ to get them to love him. He’s being selfish, he’s being horrible, he _knows,_ but. 

But.

They should all pay. 

After this, after this godforsaken mansion, he doesn’t know what to do other than that, and yet —

The witch is someone he won’t ever forget either. 

The one who’s scent led to _agony, cutting through every single inch of his mind, hours — it’s been hours, it feels like an eternity, make it stop, stop it —_ who’s hands squeezed his heart when he tried to reach for help, who gave him the ability to be hurt _endlessly,_ who thrust him into this situation and led to everyone and everything that ever left him to drown, _who’s forcing him to relive each and every horrible moment and —_

Wind slashes at his throat. 

Choking on the blood bursting out, the last thing he hears is disgust, bitter cold, and —

“My sister is too kind.”

A knife clatters to the ground as he staggers to the sink to vomit. 

He’s back in the mansion, one that isn’t collapsing and blood-stained, and somehow, _somehow,_ he’s gone off-script.

“How disgusting and pathetic, Barusu, to become sick on your first day,” a familiar voice says from behind him. Her sharp tone then softens, ever so slightly, as he flinches and whimpers in response. “Are you alright? Or will my dear sister and I have to compensate for your laziness and mediocre service?”

_Get away from me, get away from me, don’t come near me, don’t touch me unless I say, don’t —_

Viciously, he wants his coin. He wants his coin _so bad,_ but he doesn’t need it when all he wants now is —

His stomach churns, and his butler’s outfit feels too constricting, and — he was… he was cutting vegetables a second ago, right? His vision bleeds between monochrome and vibrant color, his body is all wrong and there isn’t any blood, any injuries, not yet. Not yet.

Subaru turns around with a sharp inhale. 

They’re staring at him. They need to stop, he needs them to stop, he needs them to _break._

“I wanted to live,” he says, the words forcing themselves out of his mouth. He’s half a corpse himself, he knows, and he’s been devoured and devouring for so long. “I wanted to live, and I wanted to die too, and then I just — I wanted to do horrible things, so I did.” His raspy voice cracks. “And it’s so much easier to destroy than to save.”

The shadows draw tighter around him as he picks up the knife again. A hand tugs at his sleeve gently, as if to beg and plead, but he holds in his disgust and ignores it.

“Barusu,” Ram bursts out. It’s funny, hearing her say that with hidden malice instead.

Beside her, Rem only continues staring — only with a wide-eyed, conflicted expression. Even so, that familiar anger filters into that pointed gaze of hers, her hands twitching at her side for her weapon.

The only thing stopping her is Ram and —

Neither of them move from where they are, as if frozen in time, and yet, they appear worried. _Concerned,_ even.

How adorable, to think that they can fool him twice. It’s all lies, black and white and gray. Even Ram — because she _dared_ to hide that hatred from him in this instance.

“First, cut the buds,” Subaru murmurs resentfully, his twitching fingers stilling into a death grip on the knife. “Then break apart the branches.” 

_“Barusu—”_ The sound of that nickname, said so distressed for his sake, would’ve been a pleasant lie to hear two years ago.

An empty laugh spills from him like blood, like squelching guts waiting to be devoured by vultures. It all tastes and smells metallic, like decay and blood and bile anyway. He keeps laughing as he seethes, “If only I couldn’t feel anything.”

One of them screams. Oh, that’s a pleasant lie too.

Subaru plunges the knife into his throat, drags it down his neck and to his sternum, tearing apart every shred of skin and flesh and bone — it’s jammed, it’s _stuck,_ deeper, deeper, cut _deeper_ until that shaking, trembling, destructive rage subsides. 

It doesn’t. It can’t. Not for long. But he destroys everything he can, he scrapes the entire world with his claws, and it all feels so much better.

He tilts sideways, his head spinning and spiraling as he grasps that knife, as he digs it in and shoves it down until blood bursts out of his split chest and vomits out of his throat, as if to rip apart tissue and muscle at the seams like a dissection. 

The knife drops from his spasming fingers, the blood staining them dyed a gray that flickers red. 

And all he feels is awful, awful relief as everything is bathed in darkness. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“Subaru,” another familiar voice says, smooth and melodic like the chime of a bell.

Subaru opens his eyes. His arms are wrapped around his stomach, his kneeling body clad in his robes and scarf once more, as he looks up at the speaker with gritted teeth —

Satella. 

The Witch of Envy herself.

Wearing Emilia’s face, she sits across from him. Behind her veil, only the grief in her gaze stands out against the shadows surrounding them. 

A false grief, framed by long hair that should be silver, and piercing eyes that should be violet. She can’t hide that obsession from him, the whispered _I love you’s_ and shadowed hands grabbing him, and she certainly can’t hide her mimicry of one of the few people in color, or the fact that _she did this to him just like everyone else._

His head pounds, throbs and aches, and he collapses sideways, taking deep and too-fast breaths into the vast abyss surrounding the two of them. Jerking away from her, frustration and bright, burning hatred sears in him like a brand. Quivering, shuddering, he can’t control the raw scream that he muffles with his teeth sinking into his thumb.

He can’t kill her. He can’t, he can’t, he wish he could, but he’ll bite his tongue instead, he’ll —

Satella gently moves his hand from his mouth, and brushes his tears away with her other hand. It’s too soft, too sickening, too much of a _lie,_ and a dull, strangled groan leaves him in response. 

Even when he can’t breathe, he leans into the touch. He can’t help but hope that she’ll tenderly pry apart his ribcage, can’t help but long for the day he can finally sink into blissful nothing forever.

Her hands are cold, like a corpse, yet when she moves back, he can only feel colder. 

Still. Despite _everything,_ he wants to go back to his empty throne. He wants to pretend that his crown won’t shatter into pieces at the slightest touch, and that he isn’t some fragile little thing that could crumble in an instant.

“You may be in my shadow garden now, but you’re still dreaming, Subaru,” she says quietly. With her unreadable expression, only flickering with lies and more lies and an unbearable, obsessive and incoherent love, she looks at him as if she’s searching for an answer. “I… could not control which memories bled into your dreams. I only wished for you to understand the person you’ve become, but… I…” 

“Stop,” he hisses. “Stop, stop, _stop._ You did this, it’s all _your_ fault, you’re _just like all the rest.”_

Subaru is curled inwards, not for the first time, and —

He’s not. He’s not crying, not anymore, and he hasn’t grown soft, he isn’t a compliant mess like Ram or Emilia - he knows he’s gone all twisted, knows that he’s been chipping off each and every bit of himself for years now, but it’s fine, it’s been fated for him from the start. 

And so he screeches, _“Go away._ I want you all to _go away,_ and I want — _I want this entire world to go away.”_

Satella goes silent.

“A corpse can’t betray you,” Subaru spits out. A wetness rolls down his cheeks as he leans his head back to look up at her from where he lies. “A corpse can’t do _anything_ to you. I kill, and I kill, and _I kill,_ and I know exactly what’s going to happen then. It’s so easy, and painful, and _predictable.”_

 _And I wish I could do the same to you,_ goes unsaid.

Satella laughs mirthlessly. It sounds more like a sob. “And what,” she whispers, “will be left when everything is dead and gone? You say it’s — it’s predictable, and yet you’re hurtling towards your own downfall.” She looks away. Of course, even she can’t bear to look at him. Then, after a pause, she chokes out, “You… you won’t believe me, but — I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for placing you in this position.”

All Subaru can hear now is his desperate gasping, and if he were anywhere else but _here,_ he would be jabbing his fingers into the ground until his nails were torn right off.

“I — it took a long time to come to an agreement with… with Envy, but I had thought that if I showed those memories, if I took this one drastic measure, then perhaps you could understand.” She sucks in a breath, tears filling in her eyes, piercing through him like the knife he dragged down to his chest. “Taking out your wrath on everyone and everything in your path will never bring you satisfaction in the end. You and I both know that.”

Subaru rolls over to press his forehead into his knees, the bone jutting out to the point where he’s half-tempted to shove it out of alignment. His hands twitch, trying to cover his ears, but he pulls his legs to his chest and wraps his arms around that instead.

He’s just a child. A child throwing tantrums that end with thousands dead, that end with him still gagging over the sight of dead body after body — despite the blood overflowing through his fingers — and he’s so tired. 

So, so tired. 

“I wanted to save them, once.” Subaru tries to snarl out the words, but they end up slurring together in an exhausted mumble. “All I wanted was… to have fun with them. But it was so hard, and — all I had was fear and… I hate it. I hate it, I hate this all — and. I can’t stop. I can’t, it’s all I have. I don’t. I don’t want to.”

Satella is still gray, and so he holds in a recoil as she hesitantly moves closer to him. “I understand,” she murmurs. “I wanted to save you too.”

She’s still gray, even with Emilia’s face. 

Subaru tells himself that he hates her. That he wants her dead, that he doesn’t want to be saved, because that’s his only response left now. And he should tell her this, he should scream it out, he should wrap his hands around her throat, consequences be damned, kill _everything —_

“There’s nothing to save,” Subaru says instead. Shakily, he continues, “I’ve chosen this, and — it’s easy. It’s predictable, and it hurts, but I—” His hands move of their own accord to press against his eyes, that wetness spilling from them along with that residual guilt. “You can’t — you _can’t stop me.”_

If he feels nothing, nothing but familiar devouring, and if he squeezes the life out of the rest, then… then he could be — 

“You’re wasting away, my love,” Satella says softly.

There. That’s a lie he could cling onto, and he cracks. “Stop _claiming_ to love me, stop acting so _fucking familiar_ with me.” _Stop, stop, stop it —_ “You _can’t._ You’re not allowed to. No one can.”

Subaru peers up at her, only to see her flinching back with false pity, along with that facade of grief. 

He doesn’t regret anything, but something stirs in him as he looks at her now.

The shadows draw in tighter. 

Satella takes in a shuddering breath. Then, she offers him a teary, rueful smile. “Even with time bending at our fingertips, our sins cannot be so easily erased. And you... you feel it, don’t you? The act may become easier, but the feeling of it doesn’t ever cease.”

Subaru drags himself up slightly, his arms threatening to collapse underneath him. “I know,” he snarls, his voice dull and hoarse, “I knew it from the moment I finished smashing Ram’s head in.”

Back then, he had panicked, his throat destroyed and his lungs clogged up and the snow filling him with cold, to the point where his tears were frozen on his contorted face, and — 

Kneeling beside Ram’s limp body, staring down the jagged rocks at the bottom of the cliff, he realized that everyone and everything would leave in the end. And, as he raised his head to the blurring, graying sky, he realized that he would rather drown it all out — his weakness, _their_ weakness, and the fact that none of them could ever be saved.

So, weeping and abandoned after fighting back in self-defense, he gazed in horror at his shaking, bloodied hands, and realized that if everyone else got hurt — _died,_ even — in order for him to live… then that was his only way out. His only purpose, after the people he tried so hard to please _left,_ and now — _now,_ the rest of the world wasn’t any different.

“You won’t ever be happy from this,” Satella replies sadly. Her hand stretches towards Subaru, tentative and unsure. “The entire world was never out to hurt you, and yet you take up the role of the Purge King — a position that only paints a target on your back. Is this… truly what you want?”

No. No, no, _no, no._ Shut up. _Shut up._

He curls inward, letting out a harsh sigh through his bared teeth. “It is,” he gasps out. “It — it is, I swear it is, and — it doesn’t matter, does it. I’m — I’m still _falling.”_ Blinking rapidly, that wetness falls too, landing on his shaking hands. “I don’t — I don’t _care_ if it hurts — because _I’m_ the one choosing my own ending. No one else. Even _you.”_

The coin in his pocket beckons him — if he flips tails enough times, if he _kills_ enough times, he’ll force her hand, he’ll force her to either let him continue or let him die.

Satella stiffens. A small, strangled noise leaves her, before she faintly says, “I… I may have given you the power to return by death, but I — I can’t stop you for long, can I?” She leans forward, and one of her hands ghosts his cheek with that cold, gentle touch. “Please. I want you to love yourself more, but… I now understand that you’ve made your choice.”

Subaru swallows back a scream, even as his body betrays him and _starves_ for her small, cruel comfort here. He whispers, “Then _let me go.”_

The veil in front of her face pulls away in response, revealing those mimicked features and saddened gaze even further. “One more time — then afterwards, rest as well as you can, Subaru. We will meet again someday, and… I can only hope that you’re still satisfied in the end.”

Then, he’s let go.

He’s always been a lost cause.

As the shadows consume him whole, plunging him into the depths of an abyss, Satella watches after him as he slowly fades into the darkness. 

From overwhelming void, he hears her say —

“I love you.”

It’s not a pleasant lie.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Subaru doesn’t know how long it’s been. 

All he did was run, and run, and _run,_ far away from that awful place, tripping and stumbling and barely keeping himself from smashing against the ground.

Even though he should’ve died there, because he shouldn’t be so goddamn selfish and he shouldn’t be alive right now after all he’s done, but now he thinks he can just _run away._

He left Ram behind too, left her lying there in the soft snow with her face caving in and splotches of blood and bruises covering her pale skin. But he still stared far too long at her, and he wanted to drag her down with him _so bad._

Just so he could repay her for the oh-so-wonderful kindness she’s shown towards him. Just so she could collapse and fall off the edge and be impaled by the jagged rocks below. Smother her, _break_ her, lash out at her and feel alive — that’s what the burning in his guts and the spiraling in his nerves wants, that’s what he swears he _needs,_ but he’s still at odds with himself like his blurred, black and white vision.

But he couldn’t. She’d wake sooner or later, and she’d finish him off then, and he _needs to run as far away as possible._

Subaru sags against the nearest tree. He gives a wet gasp as he leans forward, blood splattering onto the snow with his violent coughing, so — so he scrambles for his purpose, as vile and horrible and irrational as it is, and —

His half-lidded eyes flutter closed.

And when he opens them, his back is to the corner of an alleyway, and his fingers are sticking down his throat.

Subaru immediately pulls his hand away to dry-heave into the pavement. His stomach spasms and convulses even though nothing comes up, even though his skin feels far too tight and cold and it buzzes, buzzes, buzzes.

He can’t remember how long it’s been. He can’t remember where he is either, and everything’s spiraling even as he’s lying on his side. All he knows is that he ran, and he’s in the slums, somehow, and his heart still constricts as if it’s being squeezed.

 _Something_ brushes against his neck. 

His breathing quickens, until he remembers that it’s just his scarf — he’d stolen it right after he broke down at the sight of the scars marking his neck, the words _I’m going to kill you_ echoing in his head over and over again. 

He scowls at the small bloodstain at one of the fraying ends of the scarf. God. He thought he had cleaned it thoroughly enough. 

With his right hand, his fingers cramp as he continues holding onto his knife — another stolen item — in a death grip.

Of course. Of course this was all because of _her._

His stomach is empty, bottomless, and he’s grown desperate. He’s stolen scraps along the streets, he’s seized hold of scurrying rats and stolen their lives too, he’s ripped out the strands of muscle between his teeth when all he could think about was consuming, and then he forced it up because — because, this is all _poison,_ crawling around in his stomach like maggots and carcasses, and it’s because she and her sister and that mansion ruined _everything._

Now, he has nothing. Nothing, except for raw meat and garbage and the clothes on his back and dreams.

Horrible, horrible dreams, in those rare occasions that he did sleep at all, and — 

_He’s stuck here, right now, now, now, he’s sinking further and further down, and he doesn’t care enough to swim towards the surface, but he still thrashes and screams as Satella submerges him in._

_Damn her, damn_ everything, _and she just had to pretend that she and the Witch of Envy weren’t one in the same, like that could absolve her of guilt, like that could make him_ love her, _no, no, no, no —_

Blood splashes across his face as he brings down the morning star, feeling nothing at all at the sounds of hoarse crying. His hands press harder and harder until deep, dark scarring wraps around that dainty neck in the shape of claws. He jerks his chin up to stare at that red-orange sunset as he pitches forward, the sharp rocks at the bottom greeting him as they pierce through his shattered body. 

He’ll jolt awake afterwards, filled with loathing every time he wishes he opened his eyes to the ceiling of the mansion instead. So, he replaces it with his only true desire _— revenge —_ and then, as nausea and guilt gnaw at him, he stuffs his fingers down his throat.

But the worst ones are the softer dreams.

The moonlight shines down on him and Emilia in the mansion’s garden. Ram instructs him how to read and write, and behind her scathing remarks is an underlying fondness. Rem finally, finally smiles at him, and he can’t help but beam back at her. He pets Puck’s fur in one moment, and he bursts into the Forbidden Library to poke fun at Beatrice in another. 

His parents wrap their arms around him, too. They mourn his disappearance, from their puffy eyes to their funeral attire, but they’re still. 

_Gray._

Subaru wants their company. He hates that he wants it, and he hates how his first response is to throw up what little he does eat, and he even hates just how much he wants to desecrate that last bit of attachment. But he wants it too, a resentful, compulsive and uncontrollable thing itching underneath his too-tight, too-cold skin, and he thinks that if he just — if he just _massacres_ them all, then he’ll burn away all the bridges that have always held him back.

Every single person could attack him, _kill him,_ if they wanted to. And they all want to, even if it’s deep down, and he needs to stop it. 

Subaru needs to strike first. He needs to _be_ first.

He expects it. He _knows it,_ even if he burns and shivers and his sight blends together into a shifting, writhing mass of shadow, and his stomach lurches as if he’s falling still.

And, only hours later, he’s falling as a man pushes him down and leers at him. 

A target. A body, to be taken advantage of. A doll, to take one’s bitterness out on. That’s what he is; he’s just prey hiding in the corner, pretending that he isn’t easy pickings. 

_Get off me, stop_ touching _me, stop —_

Subaru blocks out the man’s horrible, alcohol-ridden breath at the side of his neck, and ignores those awful whispers about how indecisive he was, trying to decide what to do with Subaru below him like this. 

And Subaru couldn’t care to remember the specifics — except for that irritation in him with the talk of _indecision,_ of all things, and that overwhelming fear and disgust screaming in him as that murmuring brushed against his neck.

But oh, what he really remembers most was that sickening relief.

“Shut up.” His voice is shaking, gravelly from disuse and from what Ram did to him, but it hardens into complete and utter cold. _“Quiet.”_

That knife he stole, the one he clutches to himself every night, the one he uses only when he’s particularly starving, sinks into that man’s right eye. He feels the blood gush out on his face, feels the taste on his tongue, as he yanks out the knife and jabs it into the other eye.

The man’s howl is cut short by the blade pressing against his throat. His Adam’s apple bobs, his odor reeking of incontinence, his eyes now reduced to hollow and bleeding sockets. 

Using his other hand, Subaru empties the man’s pockets. 

All that spills out is coins. Enough for Subaru to buy food, or stay the night at an inn, perhaps. But one shines at him, even in the shadows, and so he picks it up with a sort of nostalgia. 

He remembers that one-grooved ten-yen coin, the one that he lost after — after Emilia saved him. Back in his old life, he used to flip it whenever he was bored, or whenever he was particularly indecisive about which mindless, brainless activity he should do to keep himself from having to go to school.

Now, he takes a deep breath, and then he lets it out in a harsh exhale. It sounds far too much like laughter, he thinks, with a sort of distant, detached horror, and it almost drowns out the sound of the agonized moans beside him.

“You know what… I’m feeling indecisive too,” Subaru sneers. “How about this… I’ll flip a coin. Heads, and you’ll be spared. Tails, and you’re dead.”

If he lets fate decide for him, this will be a whole lot easier, won’t it? Everything he wants, or thinks he wants, contradicts each other, and fate has always stayed consistent in one thing — nothing good ever comes from Natsuki Subaru.

He flips the coin. For half a second, only those wheezing, fearful gasps sound in the silence.

Nothing good ever stays, either, and it’s because it’s _him —_ an abomination who wore the face of a stupid little kid. He knows he’s gone too far, and he knows he’s only continuing to go too far.

But it’s not like he ever stopped being a petty coward. 

Or, more accurately — a _liar._

“Tails,” Subaru states, swallowing back bile and satisfaction, and thrusts the knife down beside the heart.

It’s pulled out, and then brought down again. The body convulses in a silent scream. And again. Blood trickles down its cheeks, along with the tears that were already there. The empty eye sockets are staring right through him, and he thinks that he’s going to be sick. 

Somehow, _somehow,_ awful relief still washes over him. But the corpse is still warm, and it’s going to rot soon, it’s going to rot and he wants it to disappear, it _needs_ to disappear.

Trembling, he drops the knife, and reaches for the coin he flipped. He let it slip from his fingers, earlier, before he —

Subaru clutches it now, letting the metal rub against his skin. And — he _remembers._

Because the truth is that his first kill went like this: 

He was slumped against the wall, his legs threatening to give out beneath him, and that throbbing and stabbing pain in his throat keeping him from scratching at it in a fit. It was only a few days, at most, after he escaped from the mansion and Ram’s unmoving body. 

So when he caught sight of his reflection in a puddle, he —

The animalistic shriek that left him was cut off by his damaged vocal chords. His eyes were blown wide, bulging almost, at the sight of the handprints around his neck, and the way the flesh was twisted and dark and crumpled. 

Then, Subaru turned, and found another person staring back at him from the darkness. 

A child, only a few years younger than him, with a ragged scarf around their neck and horror glistening in their gaze. They saw the way he looked at them, they saw the way his eyes trailed to the piece of bread in their hands, and they scrambled away in fear.

There was a knife in their hands, too. 

Did they really think he couldn’t see it hiding behind their back? Did they _really think_ that he wouldn’t notice?

His breathing became heavy. Harsh. 

The pieces fit together: the two of them, along with this whole world, had gone gray because they’re all liars. 

His personality was a lie to please other people. His love was a lie so he could feel an illusion of undeserved love back. He pretends to be untouchable, when he’s so hideously vulnerable. 

He pretends that he isn’t starving. 

Starving to lunge forward and wring that kid’s neck, starving to pretend that it’s Ram, or her _fucking sister who died far too quickly,_ that it’s a deserved death because everyone around him deserves it like he does, that this isn’t just because he’s practically charred with his resentment, with that uncontrollable thing seizing hold of him because _who isn’t out to get him now._

The crunch of bone startled him out of his delirium. 

_No, no, no, no, no, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t, I didn’t, please, I just —_

A broken neck was nestled in between his fingers. The bruises blossoming there were mocking him, those hollow eyes were mocking him, and _ah,_ he felt the sheer terror rushing through him, and he felt the thrumming rage too. 

_What have I done, what have I done, what have I —_

Half-stilted, like a marionette, he jerked aside and crumbled in a heap. Choking, he was choking _again,_ on branches crawling out of his injured throat that used to be seeds planted by Rem and Ram — but he grabbed the bloodied scarf and the bloodied knife and he had swore, oh, he had _swore_ that he wouldn’t do it again.

Now, Subaru leaves behind the man who dared to assault him, and laughs to himself. Holding up that bloodied coin to the moonlight, he muses that this would be a good method to go about this in the future.

A lie — of course he lied, when he thought that he could escape from having to kill. He was shaking and crying then, like he’s shaking and crying now, but it’s no matter. 

He had tried to eat that bread, despite _everything,_ because if that _— squeezing, squeezing, the bones grind together in his hands, that knife wrenched out of a spindly hand and shoved into their palm, and he thinks he could just reach in and tear it to shreds —_ if… if that child could eat it, then it wasn’t entirely poison, right?

And he ate it. 

He ate it until he was sick, until he was crushed by the immense guilt settling in, right next to the vicious loathing. Shoving blame on Ram and Rem and all the rest was as easy as shoving that knife in —

 _I’m like this because of you,_ he wanted and wants to sob, so he sobbed and sobs those words out then and now, under his breath, _I became like this because of what_ you _did._

And he was hungry, still. He was so hungry. There was an empty hole in his stomach, and whenever he saw a target, he bared his teeth and tore apart their flesh. 

Sometimes he died. Sometimes he died along with his victim. Sometimes he pointed the knife at himself, considered ending it then and there, and then didn’t because of cowardice. 

Because he’d come back anyway.

So he always killed. He always stole whatever they had on them, cleaned up the best he could, and then he was back to traveling as far as he could from that mansion.

And he _is_ hungry, even so, but he can’t. He can’t keep _anything_ down, and that goddamn pain won’t _stop,_ and it’s always _their fault._

All he knows is that he has to strike first, right? If he does that, if he does, then there’s another corpse left behind, and corpses can’t do anything, either. 

All they can do is haunt. 

They plotted to hurt him when they were alive, and they just _won’t let go_ even when they’re _dead._ He thinks about them constantly, he feels them wear him down, chipping away at any rationality he has left, and he dreams. He dreams, and it’s better than the softer dreams, but — _but,_ the guilt, that _fucking guilt,_ always makes him _break._

That’s so irritating. That’s so _frustrating._

But now, Subaru cleans up like usual. He ignores everything, and then he’s back on the move again. He scurries away like the rats he’s stabbed, several times, on several different occasions, and he plans.

Subaru can’t do anything by himself. He’s too fragile, and he’s too _afraid,_ but he’ll be punished for what he’s done, regardless. So if he uses others to do his bidding, if he uses knowledge from his old life and knowledge that he gets from returning by death, then maybe — _maybe,_ he could continue with this.

It’s fine. It’s fine if he still flinches if someone comes too close, if he has to bite down on his cheek when he thinks he sees red hair at the corner of his eye, if he purges when he’s too nauseous, too guilty and regretful and —

It’s fine if he purges lives, too.

_Don't touch her! Don't touch Rem… Don't touch my little sister!_

_If you know something, spill it all! I must avenge Rem — if you know anything, tell me! Help me! Help Rem!_

_I… will absolutely kill you._

“Shut up—” Wracked with hitching, heaving breaths, he slams his hands over his ears, his voice rising in pitch with his hysteria. “Shut up, _shut up —_ I’ll kill you first, you’ll regret it, I’ll make you regret it, _I—”_

 _It’s filling up his lungs like water, spilling through his fingers like blood, and he can’t help but writhe about even as he lets himself sink deeper and deeper, crying out, “Stop it, I’m not going to stop, you can’t make me_ stop —“

_Those shadow hands hover around him, on the verge of enveloping him in an embrace, and a whimper forces itself out of him._

_And Subaru lies, as he always has — “It’s not my fault. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not my fault, it was never my fault.”_

_He was so lonely, so lonely… nothing to turn to, nothing to trust in but hatred and violence and pulled strings, and he still. Wants it. Starves for it, for familiar bloodshed and unfamiliar comfort, even when it’s buried underneath —_

Ram comes for him. 

It isn’t a surprise. If anything, it was an inevitability.

Subaru spent weeks preparing. And he spent the entirety of that period alone and terrified and recoiling at shadows, even after building the beginnings of an organization of his own. He dreamt of her, of course, whether it was something as visceral as him dragging a blade down her chest, or something as false as the two of them lightheartedly bickering with each other.

The first couple times the latter happened, he came close to breaking his fingers from punching the wall so hard.

Now, with Ram in chains, and her slowly waking up, the first thing he does is hold that very blade to her neck.

His hollow gaze flits about her face, drinking in every detail — her hair is longer than her chin now, more unkempt and fraying at the ends, her clothes reduced to a ragged white dress, and the dark circles under her eyes almost as bad as his own. 

Along her arms, are the scars from the mabeasts that attacked her, right before she attacked him that day. 

He grits his teeth. His skin crawls, and every part of him squirms. 

In distaste, in fear, because the girl who’s tormented him all this time is here and still _breathing._ And he should be more satisfied than this, knowing that she’s at his mercy now, knowing that those more bearable dreams of his have finally come true, but — she killed him, and she tried to kill him, and he wasn’t just fighting her, he was also fighting off the instinct to just scream with half-remembered agony.

Red eyes burst open as she jolts awake, looking around frantically in a feverish panic — until they land on him, and she chokes on the blade ever so slightly clogging up her airways.

“Long time no see,” Subaru drawls. “Still as breathtaking as ever, it seems.”

Her entire body tenses — in fear, in hatred, or a combination of both — at the sound of his voice. Interesting. 

“And it seems _you_ never recovered from the day you murdered my little sister,” she snaps, taut, like she’s on the verge of screaming. Her gaze trails to the scarf around his neck, a vindictive sort of glee shining through in her stare. “Even your mere voice is completely and utterly disgusting to hear.”

“How harsh.” Subaru moves the tip of the knife to tilt her head up, her defiant glare piercing right through him. His breath hitches. Quickens. “Don’t insult your own handiwork, Ram.” 

A tiny rivulet of blood drips down the pale line of her neck. Finally — finally, there was someone who’s blood wasn’t gray. 

And of course it had to be _her._

He drags that knife’s edge along the side of her jaw like a caress. Her eye twitches, her face contorting as she tried her hardest not to flinch away. The chains rattle — he blinks, and he’s back in that forest, being tortured for hours on end, and it hurts, it _hurts,_ it —

Ram stares at him with that _wonderful_ hatred of hers. 

Oh, Subaru understands that. It’s all he ever understands these days. And it’s funny, to think that he’s basking in her attention now, when it’s really just his attention-seeking from his old life dialed up to its only natural conclusion.

“You honestly thought,” he rasps, smiling thinly, “that you could just sneak up on me like that? Congratulations, for your endless stupidity. I’ll have to commend you for following me all this way — you even went as far as leaving your precious Roswaal and your dear sister’s corpse behind.”

Ram jerks away, before going eerily still. “How disgusting,” she says harshly, though her voice quivers behind the bitterness and resentment, “to be judged… by a man as distasteful and cowardly as _yourself._ You… _you…_ who started with _Rem,_ and then helped himself to killing more, indulging yourself like the pig you are.” She rises to a shriek. _“How dare_ _you.“_

Subaru tilts his head. “If I really killed Rem,” he replies, as cold as the metal of his knife. With it, he lowers it to her arm and presses into the faint scars there, feeling her shiver against the drawing of her blood. “Oh, I would’ve given her a much slower death. The way she died was child’s play. She was _lucky.”_

Ram spits on his face. 

At first, he stiffens. Slowly, he wipes at his cheek with his sleeve, lowering his knife as he does so, and then —

A laugh bubbles out of him. Soft, empty, and heartless, his obsessive gaze never leaving hers. “You know, I thought about killing you. So, _so_ many times. Down to even the slightest detail about how I wanted it to go.” He lets out a shuddering breath, swallows down that nausea swelling up inside him, and he chuckles. “Of course, the common denominator was that I wanted it to be as painful as possible.”

 _It was all I had to comfort me,_ he does not say. _It was one of the only things that kept me going._

And he doesn’t include the nights where he dug his own nails into his arms, where he killed other people for no reason at all, and pretended that the blood was hers, pretended that he didn’t just wake up from another nightmare — either he was on his knees in front of that cliff and red-orange sky, only steps away from making that goddamn _choice,_ or he was surrounded by everyone he’s killed and wanted to kill —

Every single one of them taunting him with, _You can’t run forever._

Now, Subaru stabs the blade into one of the scars along her arm, faster and crueler now, digging the knife in until she has to try her _hardest_ to hold in a flinch, until she has to grind down on her teeth in order not to cry out. 

“Eventually, I realized that killing you, even painfully, would be too quick,” he says softly, and almost fondly, if not for the simmering resentment. “It would reunite you with your sister, wouldn’t it? And I don’t want to let you go, Ram. You’ll die only when I let you.”

It would be a shame if all that hard work, just to save her for himself, went to waste, after all.

He’s attempted recreations of inventions from his old world. And, upon using them to make connections with mercenaries and merchants, he’s recruited people along his way to Kararagi. 

Still, he tells himself, even now, that he didn’t choose Kararagi because it reminded him of his old life, back when a coin flip didn’t have life and death attached to it. No matter how much he aches, no matter how much he longs for the kind of comfort that he doesn’t ever deserve.

No. _No,_ Kararagi was simply far away from that mansion. Kararagi was the perfect center to establish what he named as Pleiades, and once he managed to recruit Halibel, he came back for Ram, and met her halfway.

And like him, she was driven by spite alone. 

She _is_ driven by spite alone, and it’s admirable, really, how much you could hold onto something.

Even if it hurts. 

“I still have unfinished business at the Margrave mansion,” Subaru seethes. 

He tears into her, retracing each and every scar until they bled anew, drenching her arms and leaking onto the floor in a dazzling red. A sharp gasp ruptures out of her, ruptures like the flesh of her pale skin. 

“I’m sure you’ll understand, since you’ve come all this way,” he continues, through gritted teeth. “I have several matters to take care of, and that place just so happens to be near the top of the list.”

He’ll strengthen Pleiades, he’ll claw his way to victory and he’ll crown _himself._

At the very least, he deserves that much. If he just massacres everyone and everything in his path like he planned, tie up loose ends at the mansion, and even kill the subordinates he used to capture Ram — just to be _sure —_ then he’ll be fine. 

He’ll be fine, and he’ll finally be satisfied, while Ram can only watch as everything falls down around the two of them.

“I’ll kill you,” she chokes. Her eyes shine with tears, though she curls her hands into claws as she bursts into a screech — “ _I’ll kill you._ Die, _die,_ die at _my hands,_ die to _me_ for all that you’ve done, _you_ _monster!”_

From her contorted face, to the cuts and spilling blood from her thrashing body, he knows this: break anyone enough, and they become _wrong._ Whether that’s compliance, dependence, or violence, it doesn’t make a difference at all.

Except for how to induce his desired response. 

Because manipulating strings and flipping a coin here and there are so much simpler than truly connecting with others, past one vicious cycle after another. 

It’s as easy as the way Rem died so peacefully in her sleep.

“That’s the thing, isn’t it.” His smile widens as he takes in that deep, dark despair emanating from her, as he yanks away the knife and blood splashes onto his robes. While she struggles in vain, writhing around in her rage, rattling the chains until even he wants to scream, he sneers, “You’ll never be able to avenge your sister’s death without my permission.”

Subaru turns his back away, just as so many have done to him. 

The sound of her enraged cries follows him past the door and into the next room, _and —_

The chains stop. 

It all _stops._

Her screams stop, too, and his knees buckle beneath him, along with the knife slipping from his clammy hands, and he can’t. _Breathe._ He stares into nothing, he listens to his own heaving in the emptiness around him, and he bites down, _hard,_ on his lip in an attempt to _quiet._

But it’s too quiet. It’s too loud, because everything is _dead and gone._ The lights dance in front of his eyes, but his vision is blurry and darkening by the second, so he squeezes them shut. 

And the knife seems more and more appealing, doesn’t it? He _enjoyed_ tormenting Ram, enjoyed plotting his own vengeance, and he pushed past his jittery, searing nerves and the fact that it shouldn’t have to end like this and that instinctive desire to just _run away —_ all so he could win over her, over _everyone,_ just this once.

And he’s on the ground, he realizes, with his hands pressed into the floor in front of him as he hunches over, as he tries to breathe and he can’t, can’t, _can’t._

The shadows surrounding him draw tighter and tighter, to a suffocating degree, and everything, _everything_ is —

“It’s too late… isn’t it?” The laugh that wretches itself from his cracked lips is another half-broken sound, just like the broken thing it comes from. It isn’t only directed at himself — a dark purple weaves itself around him, entrapping him in that _scent._ “Atrocity becomes addicting, and... I can’t take it back, can I? Even if I...”

_...regret it._

He’s emerged out of multiple loops soaked in blood and surrounded by decay, begging himself to stop, yet crying out for more. And he’s smothered his own wailing, agonized sobs far too many times to count, rocking back and forth with his arms wrapped around himself, his nails sinking into his sides. 

Every day, every night, and he shattered at the sight of those eyes watching him, the dead haunting him, and the living threatening to reach for him. 

And no one. _No one._ Came to _save him._

It was _their fault,_ wasn’t it? They died because they came closer to him, because they tried to hide their betrayal, because he flipped tails and therefore, it was destined for them to die. Or, they were just puppets, pawns, under his command, and if they dared to stand up against him, they would be killed. 

That was just the way it worked. The way it’s always worked. 

But if all that was left was just him, crying alone and babbling empty justifications to no one at all, then that too was a deserved death. 

An _indulgent_ one. 

And even his lying, gray self knows the truth every time he forms his lips around the words _it’s not my fault._

“None of this matters,” Subaru whispers. The witch’s so-called love takes the shape of arms wrapped around him, and he leans into it despite himself. “None of us ever mattered.” 

_My beloved,_ she pleads. _Please. You may have chosen your path, but it doesn’t have to end this way._

_I… do not desire to send you back to the beginning of your journey when you’ve already suffered enough, and when you’ve done horrible things that mustn’t be erased so easily._

A caustic smile spreads across his face. “I’m sorry.”

Then —

Anguish — anguish and tender cruelty surrounds him, corroding all those attempts he made at tearing attachment into pieces, unraveling the awful truth of his own desires — that overwhelming urge to lash out at the entire world, that horrible longing for _love,_ no matter how false it was, no matter how much it tortured him, too — and, not for the first time — 

Subaru lets go.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“I finally found you.”

He opens his eyes, his knees digging into the cold, hard ground, as he gazes up at the red-orange sky and —

“Why,” he asks shakily. “Why… why… _why...”_

Beatrice stands there, as indifferently as always. With her yellow pigtails and extravagant red dress flowing in the breeze, her butterfly-shaped pupils eye him with disinterest thinly veiling her concern.

“What’s the matter, I suppose?” 

Subaru scrambles away from her and that godawful cliff ledge. “Why… did you come for me?” With his hands reaching up to tug on his hair, he pulls on the strands as he spits, “No… I understand now. I always have. This — this is where everything started, isn’t it?”

Beatrice huffs. “I have no idea what you’re babbling about, in fact. Only that the contract I entered into was to protect you.” 

She takes a small step towards him. Her expression hardens, though she still looks down at him with some semblance of pity. 

“Clinging to faint hope only serves your own convenience, I suppose. What was lost can't be reclaimed. You threw away your chances to explain yourself to the older sister. And no matter which is lost, those sisters will never be complete again, I suppose.”

Subaru can only stare at her, wide-eyed and gasping for air. He looks and looks, and he thinks that he can still see the Beatrice who cried so happily when he killed her. “I… I _know_ that I was making a selfish, disgraceful fuss in the end, wasn’t I? For two years, I —”

For two years, all he had was that fraying of everything he thought he was and everything he thought ever was, and it’s dying. Dead. 

It’s better if it’s his own hands pushing other people under to thrash and scream, if it’s his own hands controlling how everything and everyone ends, if it’s his own hands shoving the responsibility onto fate and all the things he was so resentful of — except for the very person he’s chipping away at slowly, steadily. 

The very person that he’s saving for last —

Himself.

Beatrice’s eyes narrow as she offers her hand to him. “At the very least, you need to die where I can't see you, or I'll have bad dreams, I suppose. So I'll help you escape this domain.”

Ha. _Haha._

This… was it, right? 

Where… where everything began.

Subaru was fine. He was fine drowning in the rest of these memories, grasping onto the scraps of power he did have. It hurt, it was blood-soaked and reeked of decay, but it’s familiar. 

Predictable.

And he saw that crushing loneliness in her, didn’t he? The moment he laid eyes on her after those two years, the moment she asked if he was _that person,_ and the moment he gave the answer she wanted, he saw it. 

He _knows_ it. 

So he reaches for her hand, pretending that this is just another sliver of comfort, pretending that this isn’t just another cruel sort of mercy. 

“This isn’t fair,” Subaru chokes out. “This — this isn’t… I just wanted to live. I… wanted to…”

Beatrice’s touch was gentle then, and it’s gentle now — but he hates how he’s reminded of two other hands, holding his own while he was in the midst of a nightmare. 

Rem and Ram, he remembers. 

Oh, it’s funny how they couldn’t bear to see him suffer then, when their supposed kindness dies so quickly. It’s funny, when the very things he had nightmares about were holding both of his hands. 

And it’s absolutely hilarious how he came _this close_ to killing himself for them, and that _this_ was the mistake that set off a long line of mistakes. Because it was a leap of faith, a test of trust and courage and just how much his self-hatred could win over self-preservation just this once, just in this exact way.

He failed. 

The worst part was the countless times he considered killing himself later, the blade pointed at his throat with his trembling hands. Then, there were all the times he died — to recruit people like Halibel and Cecilius, to avoid death after falling into it again and again, and even to kill himself, when he couldn’t take it. 

On those days, he headed straight to Ram and gave her his life on a silver platter, right into her own trembling hands. 

She always obliged. It was all she lived for, after all.

Then, Beatrice’s expression softens. The pity shines through more clearly as she glances behind him. “You were too slow, in fact.”

The wind picks up, quickening to a dangerous level. Howling, roaring, and a deafening cry in his ears, he lets go of Beatrice’s hand to slam it against his mouth. 

He’s going to be sick. He can’t. He can’t take it. Not again. It’s going to happen again, and — and he doesn’t know if he can —

“I finally found you,” Ram snarls, the wind swirling around her with each and every step she took towards him. _“I won’t let you get away.”_

Back then, he tried to jump off that cliff. And now, he’s trapped in that moment, and he’s been given a second chance.

His nails dig into his palms. He’s afraid, he’s afraid, he’s _afraid,_ and more than that, why should he jump off that cliff, why, why, when they’ll just torture and kill him again, won’t they? They’ll do it again and again, and it doesn’t matter if they were nice to him once, because they could just as easily hurt him _again._

But they… they teased him, taught him how to read and write and peel vegetables, and maybe it was a small thing, but… it meant the world to him. 

And it wasn’t an unpleasant lie when you removed every wrong that happened afterwards.

“Stay back, I suppose.” Beatrice moves to stand in front of Subaru, firmly stating, “So long as my contract exists, I won’t hold back, not even against you.”

Ram grits her teeth. The tear tracks on her face are lit up against the sunset. “And you, Beatrice-sama, seem to forget that we're not in the mansion now. We're away from the Forbidden Library, in the forest. Are you certain you can protect him from me?”

Beatrice glances back at Subaru at the corner of her eyes. A hint of anxiety flickers across her face, before settling back into her usual dispassion. 

“Beatrice,” he begs, his voice catching as he staggers to his feet. “Please… please, _just —”_

All he does is dream of the dead. He dreams of his own twisted power-fantasies, he dreams of unhealed wounds that he only pours salt into, and he dreams of soft, broken things that won’t ever be true. 

And this second chance of his is only an illusion. A soft, broken thing that won’t ever be true. 

Beatrice outstretches her hand to him, and he takes it as easily as he’d take Ram’s hands around his throat.

In another world, he manages a wavering, determined smile. He declares that he’ll save them all, because he cares about them infinitely more than he cares about himself. The ground rushes up to meet him, and his body is crushed with a sickening squelch.

In that world, he made the selfless decision. The one where he casts aside any sense of rationality, and gives a second and third chance to people who won’t ever know about what they’ve done, and who will always have another chance to hurt him again. 

In this world, he, with tears streaming down his cheeks, is transported away into the forest by Beatrice — because it turns out that he’d rather drown than fall. Even though the lines between the two blend together, even though he chooses an ending far from the happy one he was so entitled to in the beginning. 

He spent his illusion of a second chance making the exact. 

Same. 

Decision. 

And it’s ironic, really, how that sliver of self-preservation still made him fall.

It’ll still make him fall. 

And as he runs, his breathing ragged and far too quick, he hears Satella say:

_I love you._

  
  


_I love you._

  
  
  


_I love you._

  
  
  
  


_I love you._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_I’m sorry._

  
  
  


The first thing Subaru sees when he wakes up is a room completely drenched in white.

The walls, the floor, the ceiling, and even —

His hurried gasps ring in the silence, his heartbeat quickens to a frantic pace, and his eyes lock onto Emilia’s concerned face looking down at him. With his head in her lap, and his mind reeling, he — _he —_

“Subaru,” she murmurs, in a trembling, pleading sort of manner that makes him flinch. “Are… are you alright?”

They both know the answer to that.

He wants to scream. He wants to push her away, but he _needs_ her, and she’s still _here_ and _colorful_ and he can’t take it. She could’ve easily killed him the moment he fell into the memories Satella drowned him in, but his head is in her lap. His head is in her lap, _somehow,_ and —

It feels _good._

It shouldn’t, because he did this to her, he stole her away and he locked her up in this fucking room, like a bird in a cage, and it doesn’t matter if he designed the room so that she could break it from the inside, because this room will _break her._

He told himself that’s what he wants, and he went through with _everything_ because he’s not a _coward,_ but... he shouldn’t continue this. He shouldn’t continue this illusion of intimacy after what’s happened. He should push her away, because she’s _too close._

Because he can’t just do this to her on top of everything else he’s done. 

His teeth are chattering. His hands keep clenching and unclenching at his sides, and his lips quiver as he manages, “Emilia… I…” 

He can’t. 

He can’t, he can’t — he remembers the darkness of Satella’s supposed love, the shadows of her garden and the alleyways he ran through after escaping from the mansion two years ago, and he remembers the loneliness. He remembers how overwhelming it was, pushing him down and devouring him whole. 

The only touch he received was when he was being attacked, and when he himself was attacking others. 

He’s lingered on it before, on the softness of Beatrice’s hand in his own, on Ram’s cruel mercy, on chains and morning stars and coins, but he’s… always gone back to Emilia, and how they held each other as they died in that loothouse. Or how they held hands while doing radio calisthenics, or whenever he reached for her during his many attempts to ask her on a date.

This… is still far too overwhelming, and he _can’t take it._ He can’t take it, and yet he doesn’t have the heart to push her away. His own heart beats too fast like a caged bird, but the two of them in this awful place are caged birds, aren’t they? 

They’re both caged birds, but at least one of them has the key for the other… right? 

And the thought fills him with disgust, with the urge to pry into her and prove _exactly_ why he doesn’t _need her,_ especially because she stood idly by while he was tortured, and because she looks and sounds like the witch. But it’s not her fault. It’s not her fault when it comes to anything and everything, like it’s not her fault that she couldn’t save him earlier than _this,_ and —

Before Satella, before those horrible memories, he shoved open the door, didn’t he? His feet tripped on each other and he barged his way into that first memory, and he collapsed against her. Against _Emilia,_ who held him, despite the suppressed agitation written all over her face, and all over the shaking of her limbs and the thin, pressed line of her lips. 

And as he sunk deeper and deeper into awful truth, she lowered him to the ground, and allowed him to lay across her lap as his eyes fluttered closed. 

But now —

Emilia only looks to him with her violet, glistening eyes and silver hair, and with the chime of her voice, she can only say, “Subaru… I —” 

_I hate you,_ he imagines her saying. _You hurt me, you and Puck_ lied _to me, and… you need me, is what you said, wasn’t it? And yet you... you don’t…_ care _about me at all... do you?_

She opens and closes her mouth, like he clenches and unclenches his hands, and she weeps. Openly, readily, in front of someone who’s basked in the blood of everyone and everything around her. His fingers twitch, attempting to move to brush away her tears, but he doesn’t. He can’t. 

His hands are too blood-soaked. 

Instead, Emilia’s hand hovers next to his face, as if in an aborted attempt of her own to brush the wetness at his cheeks away. But she smiles sadly, mournfully, and says, “I wish everything turned out differently.”

And like a newborn fawn, like _prey,_ he turns his head to face away from her. A dull, strangled response wrenches itself out of him — 

“I… wanted the same thing.” 

Subaru takes a deep, shuddering breath. His head pounds and bursts, and he tells himself that Emilia could easily reach over and snap his brittle body with her own two hands. 

He almost wishes she would.

But an apology is right on the tip of his tongue, and… there wouldn’t be a point to it. 

If none of this ever mattered, if none of _them_ ever mattered, then… why would he apologize, when he knows that he’s swimming towards the bottom of the sea that he’s already drowning in? Why should he, when he knows that it’ll just be another unnecessary cruelty on a long list of cruelties?

It’s funny. It’s funny, because —

 _I’m sorry,_ he said to Satella then, with bitterness twisting his every feature. 

If only he could ever be able to choose another ending. 

And _oh,_ there’s nothing left to apologize for. There’s nothing left to regret, nothing left to even _say._ He’ll still claw his way through anything with just spite and misery alone, happily swimming downwards all the same — despite the water already clogging up his lungs, and the chains wrapped around him like the witch’s scent and her _love._

“Thank you,” Subaru still says to Emilia, despite _everything,_ and it hurts.

It hurts.

**Author's Note:**

> TW:  
> \- gore in general (eye gore in one scene, graphic stabbing/cutting at some points)  
> \- nongraphic vomiting, connected to the eating disorder not otherwise specified parts of the fic. it doesn't have a main focus, but it's definitely there  
> \- scene with violence against a child  
> \- scene that may be read as implied/referenced attempted rape/sexual assault
> 
> Again, thank you to Arouctine for beta reading this! They're great, please check out their fic and any future fics of theirs, their writing is amazing. (It's called "Behold the Unthinkable" and is here on AO3). I never would’ve finished without their encouragement and lovely humor pfft. :,D And I will say that Turacoverdin's Wrath If fic "seeing red", along with the Wrath If analysis discussion we had, was definitely an inspiration. So please check them and their fics out too. :3 And thank you for reading! I always appreciate every kudos, bookmark, etc, though I always love hearing your thoughts too if you have any. :D
> 
> Anyway, here's some rambling that you're welcome to skip if you'd like hah:  
> Writing Wrathbaru fills me with wrath sometimes, like _jeez._ There's so much to balance with him, but it's always incredibly interesting diving into his headspace (though it is, uh, terrifying). And I really wish there was more content for him! Plus, the whole situation regarding the Wrath If (him making the choice not to jump off the cliff and everything that followed afterwards) is incredibly complex; for one thing, it was the more sane choice. I mean… killing yourself to save two people who betrayed, tortured, and killed you? I always wished that canon explored that a bit more. And while Wrathbaru is a victim, I try not to absolve him of his crimes still, because there were still the choices he made. There’s a nuance there, you know? He just makes me really sad, and he’s one of the most underrated Ifbarus in my opinion. :,) That, and Ram and Subaru have this relationship in the Wrath If that isn't shown much at all, but I took creative liberties with the implications given. I don't think I'll ever get over their dynamic in this If haha.
> 
> And tbh, I really didn't think I'd finish this; with the contest, I only had two weeks to write this, and with everything else in my life deciding to hit me like a truck at the same time (along with Wrathbaru being a bit of a pain in the ass with his goddamn complexity), it was very difficult. I never do know how to feel about my writing, but I'm at least glad that I managed to finish this and have fun while writing this fic! (Though I really would've considered exploring Subaru's relationship with Halibel and/or Emilia more if I had more time.)
> 
> And at this rate I'm gonna end up with an in-depth, fill-in-the-gaps fic for almost every single Ifbaru... and with a lot of angsty fics in general... like for me, it's incredibly self-indulgent, but I always wonder if other people enjoy reading it as much as I like writing it lol. I always try to add variance to every work of mine though + this isn't all I write lmao, I swear I do have happier WIPs (but I do end up writing pain a lot, yes,,, let's just say I've got Greed If fics in the works).
> 
> P.S. A horrible, horrible thought I just had... good god, how many times do I have to write choking. Like canon just has a thing for it, and now it's been two fics so far with like. Choking in a major scene or two and it's like. Why and how have I ended up like this. :..D After finishing Carrion, I was making a note for myself for Wrath If stuff in the future and then I was like. "Oh no will I write about choking again" and holy shit the _again_ in that statement takes me out like that goddamn choking, I -


End file.
